China's Lunar Rover Is Working But Not Moving

In December of 2013, China's Chang'e-3 lander successfully touched down on the lunar surface. Shortly thereafter, the small lunar rover dubbed "Yutu" emerged. It immediately began collected data on the surface, taking pictures among other things.

However, in January, the rover developed mechanical difficulties shortly before it was to go into a hibernation mode during the two week lunar night. At that point, there was a serious question as to whether Yutu would "wake up" when the long night was over.

Wake up it did, but there were still issues with the rover that the Chinese space program was struggling to repair. Those issues were still not resolved when the rover went into hibernation again during another lunar night.

Earlier this week, Yutu successfully woke up, according to reports from Xinhua. Its instruments appear to be in working order. However, the rover is no longer able to move.

The rover was only intended to have a mission life of three months - which it has already exceeded. And although it can't move around, it's still providing useful data to scientists. That includes the use of its ground-penetrating radar to learn more about the composition of the Lunar surface.

China's next lunar mission, landing the Chang'e-4 craft, is currently scheduled to launch in 2015.